Thursday, July 31, 2014

"When I interviewedThe Daily Show’sJon Stewart two years ago for a documentary I co-directed,The Muslims Are Coming!, one of the questions I posed to the talk show host was: Do you think your show has had an impact on issues? Surprisingly, Stewart responded 'no.' At first, my co-director, Negin Farsad, and I thought Stewart was being unduly modest. But he was actually being sincere. Stewart went on to list issues he had railed against for years—such as media sensationalism—and noted that nothing tangible had changed despite his best efforts. But if that question were put to Stewart today, honesty would compel him to answer that his efforts have changed the way many who follow him now view one issue: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Specifically, Stewart has raised awareness about the human toll that this conflict has inflicted upon Palestinian civilians.

I first noticed Stewart’s efforts in January 2009 during the 22-day battle between Hamas and the Israeli military. That episode resulted in approximately 1,400 Palestinians being killed, of which human rights groups say 700 were civilians. Stewart’s coverage included the segment 'Gaza Strip Maul.' (The title summed up his POV.) In it, Stewart comically noted that the only thing Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on is supporting Israeli’s bombing of Gaza, likening it to a Mobius Strip, which is an object with only one side to it. Stewart, of course, did express sympathy for the people of Israel suffering from Hamas missiles. But clearly he was moved by the massive Palestinian civilian casualties, calling it a 'civilian carnage Toyotathon.'" (TheDailyBeast)

"Potential Democratic presidential candidates have a must-stop this campaign season: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s backyard. At Reid’s request, Vice President Joe Biden helped fill the coffers last week of a Nevada Democratic congressional candidate and his state party’s political apparatus, a central cog in the Senate majority leader’s political machine. A couple of months earlier, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley reached out to Reid’s team to let the majority leader know he would be the main speaker at a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Las Vegas for the Clark County Democratic Party. O’Malley followed up with a donation to Reid’s preferred candidate in the lieutenant governor’s race. In September, Hillary Clinton will deliver the keynote address at Reid’s annual clean energy summit at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, after Reid asked her to speak at his prized seven-year-old event. And there are ongoing discussions about adding another Clinton event to the calendar: a fundraiser for the state party this fall, several sources said this week. The decision to swing through Nevada two years before campaign season speaks to the state’s position as the first in the West during the presidential nominating contest in 2016. But it also highlights an indisputable fact: No matter how unpopular Reid is with Republicans, leading Democrats are eager to woo the powerful majority leader with a long memory and reputation for loyalty. His backing could be an important factor in a contested primary and even more crucial if he continues to lead Senate Democrats into the next administration, regardless of whether the party keeps its grip on the majority. And there is no better way to win over Reid than to raise cash and help his team win elections. " (Politico)

"Being there and seeing a painting of my grandmother I had never seen before from when she was in her 20s and knowing that she and my grandfather had walked on those marble flagstones at a time when the future was not known to them and yet strains of unease must already have been palpable. While today there is a leak in the skylight that illumines the grand entranceway, and water puddles on the floor. It was all profoundly moving, I’ve been crying ever since I got back to Key West. I keep wanting to say I’m home but I notice I only say I’m back. I think Serbia is my home. I’m more torn than ever. Towards the end of my grandmother’s life when a little bit of confusion began muddling her thoughts we flew from Paris to London together. When it was time to get off the plane, this being the 80s when the stewardesses would line up at the front as one exited, they still do, but it used to be more formal. The formality confused my grandmother and took her back to a time when long lines of uniformed servants would wait outside fancy dwellings to greet or bid farewell, and it was her habit to stop and shake everybody’s hand and speak a word to each. So she stopped at every stewardess and shook their hand and said something sweet and special to each one. I could have shuffled her on, I could have explained it wasn’t what she thought, but I let her do her thing. I remember one summer house, called Pratolino outside of Florence, and I remember arriving and departing and seeing the composed army of staff in a long line leading to the front door. This was a world and a life my grandmother was familiar with, the only one she knew growing up. Years later after settling in Paris and after the death of her husband she learned to get around town on buses." (Christina Oxenberg)

"I went down to Michael’s for lunch. I was about ten minutes late because of the traffic going across down (and the fact that one of the blocks on East 63rd was closed suddenly)(typical of New York traffic now). I was relieved that my guest had not yet arrived. No problem; I don’t mind waiting for people since so many have waited for me. I talked to Michael, to Steve Millington the restaurant’s GM, to Mickey Ateyeh, the jewelry and accessories executive (Angela Cummings, Tiffany, etc.) and Betsy Perry, the writer, who was lunching with her. Then I took my seat. It was 1:25. I was beginning to get the feeling maybe she wouldn’t show. This is also not a problem for me. I hadn’t been to Michael’s in several days and because it’s one of the ways I get out of the house on weekdays, I was glad to be there, to see everybody and to view the room. At 1:30, I decided to order just in case. I tried calling my lunch date and couldn’t reach her. No problem. Hoping everything was all right on her end. 1:40, I knew I was going solo. Steve brought me a couple magazines to look at: The Hollywood Reporter and Hamptons. The latter, mainly real estate ads for large houses selling for what used to be considered a great personal fortune and is now considered a shrug. The former (HR) full of items about entertainment executives. Zzzzzz. You had to be there ... There were agents and publishing people, bankers and PR. Authors – Diane Clehane of mediabistro.com was lunching with Diana Gabaldon, the best selling novelist. Joni Evans (literary agent) was lunching with Suzanne Gluck (literary agent) and Tracy Fisher. Bonnie Fuller and Gerry Byrne were in the bay at Table 1 with Wednesday guests; Roger Friedman, Broadway and Hollywood columnist, blogger, journalist; Alice Mayhew, editor at Simon & Schuster; Andrew Stein; Jerry Inzerillo of Forbes Travel; Dennis Basso at Table 2, next door to me; Harry Benson was lunching with another Forbes editor, Joseph DeAcetis; PR guru Lisa Linden with Christopher Heywood of NYC & Company; Neil Lasher of EMI; Peggy Siegal; Thomas Moore; Andy Sandow of Sandow Media; Michael Appelbaum; Nancy Murray of Louis Vuitton; Steven Stolman with Tom Shea; Vogue’s Susan Plagemann; Kim Bryant of WABC; Patricia Malone; Noble Smith; Roxan Cason; Karen Tarteof Sparks Global Brand Agency; Karen Katzman of Badgely Mischka; David Stern, former head of the NBA; Antonio Weiss; Dini von Mueffling, and dozens more just like ‘em." (NYSD)

(Photos by Emily Assiran/New York Observer)

"Would it kill you to know that Woody Allen is just like us? He’s got two teenage girls who listen to pop music on their iPhones. He’s always worried that something bad will happen to them. He exercises every morning but struggles to keep his weight up. (Okay. He’s not totally like us.)

He’s also 78 years old, has won four Academy Awards, has directed actors to six more wins (18 nominations), and has never missed a year releasing a film since 1977. This past weekend came No. 44, a comedy called Magic in the Moonlight. Whether it’s a hit or not doesn’t matter to him particularly, because it’s done, and there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s busy finishing No. 45 and thinking about No. 46. But so far, so good: in 17 theaters, Magic took in a very healthy $426,000.

His frequent collaborator, Marshall Brickman, co-author of such classic Allen films as Annie Hall and Manhattan Murder Mystery, tells me: 'He secretes movies like honey. It’s an astonishing record. I don’t think anyone’s come close to it.' Mr. Allen’s had some problems, but we all know about them. That’s not what this is about. Mr. Allen’s had a life since 1992, when he left Mia Farrow and subsequently married her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. It’s been 22 years. There must be something else to talk about. There is: he’s still thinking about life and death, the end of the world, and why we’re all here. All the years with Ms. Farrow, Mr. Allen lived alone on the East Side of Central Park. He wasn’t domiciled until he married Soon-Yi and they started a family. When I meet him at his shambling, low-profile production office off of Fifth Avenue, it’s one of the first things to come up: are the big questions easier now? 'No, it only becomes more tragic,' Mr. Allen says. He’s dressed like, well, Woody Allen, compactly and neat in a button down shirt and chinos. His feathery gray hair is always a jolt because the Mr. Allen you have in your mind is Alvy Singer. But he’s really, pleasantly, the same as ever." (Observer)

"In the glory days, no man ever went to Yale to learn anything. God gave us Columbia and Harvard for that. OK, there’s Harold Bloom, but otherwise, Yale was intended for unadulterated gentlemanly pleasure and sport. As Wilde said, 'If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough.' Is there anyone around who remembers when Yale was the most splendid, elegant, and gentlemanly of Ivy League colleges; when Andover and St. Paul’s sent their best and brightest to New Haven; when, as Fitzgerald wrote, 'Taft and Hotchkiss…prepared the wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale'? Where are the Yale men who had their soft tweed jackets and their Oxford-gray flannel trousers made at J. Press and Arthur M. Rosenberg; who trod the Memorial Quadrangle shod in the Raywood-model, full brogue, slip-on Peal shoe and the Oxford-cloth, rolling, button-down-collar Brooks Brothers shirt? And what’s happened to the tables down at Mory’s, which the 21 Club wished it looked like? And whither the Fence Club ...? Ralph Lauren would have made a mess of himself had he seen such authentic WASP class and décor: stuffed leather chairs, polished mahogany tables, Turkish carpets, and framed pictures of Y-sweatered Eli captains sitting on the Yale Fence. O, where is the Yale of Skull and Bones, when it was the world’s most prestigious college underground secret society? Admittedly, it always had a meritocratic, hence slightly middle-class, tinge. The fifteen senior “knights” might include such campus big shots as a team captain and the editor of the Yale Daily News, but its graduate patriarchs became presidents, ambassadors, and, most important of all, partners in Brown Brothers Harriman. And where are the modern equivalents of Donald Ogden Stewart, Gerald Murphy, and Brendan Gill, who represented the lefty, artistic wing of the brotherhood—yet gentlemen all? O, where is the Yale of Bones’ chief rival, Scroll and Key, whose brothers deferentially referred to themselves publicly as second in fame to Bones, knowing full well privately that they were, in fact, the snottiest of senior societies? Like the Order of the Garter, which Lord Melbourne coveted 'because there was no damn merit in it,' Scroll and Key preferred aristocratic and moneyed birth over brash achievement. O, where are the likes of Jock Whitney and Paul Mellon, both cringingly shy, and Scroll and Key visions of the beau ideal? And who remembers when Scroll and Key’s idea of an arty-farty brother was the composer of 'Eli Yale! Bulldog! Bulldog!' the über-sophisticate, Cole Porter?" (Bunky Mortimer)

Juliet Nicolson, author of The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm.

"The social scene in New York is practically non-existent as far as NYSD’s coverage of interest. It’s been moved west to 'The Hamptons' -- Southampton, East Hampton, and everything in between and north (Sag Harbor). For me there’s more time for reading, and for my birthday a friend of mine gave me a book with the message, 'It all happened before ...' obviously referring to the state of our world today. The message aroused my curiosity so that I opened just to look, and I’ve been swimming through it with great pleasure – and more than few laughs -- for the past two days. It is called “The Perfect Summer; England 1911 Just Before the Storm” by Juliet Nicolson. Ms. Nicolson is the daughter of the late Nigel Nicolson, the British writer/publisher and politician who died ten years ago at age 87. Ms. Nicolson is also the granddaughter of two now legendary characters who came of age in the era of the Edwardians – Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Their son Nigel (there was another son Ben) published a famous book about forty years ago about his parents’ marriage called 'Portrait of a Marriage.' In it we learn that both man and wife – who individually led very productive professional lives as writers (and he also a diplomat) – were gay. They also had to varying degrees, active sex lives with their gay partners. Vita – a most fascinating character (captured beautifully in a biography by Victoria Glendenning, published in the late 1960s, called 'Vita') – was a novelist, an essayist and a horticulturalist." (NYSD)

"Today the Crystal Ball is switching its gubernatorial race ratings in five states: Arkansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, and Wisconsin. All five contests are competitive and close, and our new ratings will not be our last in these states. But as of mid-summer, we believe the following about each race:Arkansas: In a battle of two former members of the U.S. House, Asa Hutchinson (R) has built a small lead in the polls against Mike Ross (D) in the Natural State’s open-seat contest. Should Hutchinson win, it would mark a turnover from the Democrats as incumbent Gov. Mike Beebe (D) is term-limited. Arkansas has moved very sharply toward Republicans in recent years at the federal level, though Sen. Mark Pryor (D) is trying to buck this trend in the state’s Senate race this cycle. But the GOP has also made significant gains at the state level, taking full control of the state legislature in 2012 for the first time since Reconstruction. With Hutchinson’s polling lead and the increasingly Republican proclivities of Arkansans, we’re moving it from Toss-up to Leans Republican.Hawaii: Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) is so personally unpopular that he will be lucky to survive the Democratic primary against state Sen. David Ige. In fact, Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling recently found Ige leading Abercrombie 49%-39%, though any survey in the notoriously-difficult-to-poll Aloha State must be treated with caution. That said, we’re hearing that the public polls in Hawaii might not be far off the mark, and that Abercrombie is in real trouble heading into the Saturday, Aug. 9 primary. Even if Abercrombie wins renomination, he may well falter in the general election matchup against his 2010 general election opponent, former Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona (R). Moreover, the independent candidacy of former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann, an ex-Democrat, will further complicate things. This race shifts from Leans Democratic to Toss-up, and the primary is a Toss-up, too. We still favor Sen. Brian Schatz (D) in his primary against Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D): Abercrombie’s appointment of Schatz to deceased former Sen. Daniel Inouye’s (D) Senate seat, against the deathbed wishes of the Hawaii legend, is contributing to Abercrombie’s troubles with his own party, but perhaps isn’t hurting Schatz in the same way. (What was Schatz supposed to do — turn down the appointment?) Schatz also lacks Abercrombie’s grating style. Both primaries will be very much worth watching. Illinois: Gov. Pat Quinn (D), barely elected to his first full term in 2010 and hampered by a poor state economy and budget problems, appears to be losing so far to a wealthy Republican, Bruce Rauner. Quinn’s narrow win in 2010 happened in part because his opponent was very conservative, too much so for Illinois even in the midst of a gigantic Republican wave that cycle. However, this time Quinn faces an “outsider” opponent in Rauner, who is promising to clean up the mess in Springfield and who can also self-fund his campaign to a large degree. While this race could well shift again this cycle, we’re now moving it from Toss-up to Leans Republican. We’ve heard a lot of pessimism from Democrats about Quinn’s odds, though they hold out hope that he can pull the rabbit out of a hat once again. He might, but he’s down right now — and facing a better candidate, Rauner, than he did last time. According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Quinn would be the first governor from the president’s home state (and of the president’s party) to lose reelection since 1892." (Sabato)

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

"We have long argued that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inherently insoluble. Now, for the third time in recent years, a war is being fought in Gaza. The Palestinians are firing rockets into Israel with minimal effect. The Israelis are carrying out a broader operation to seal tunnels along the Gaza-Israel boundary. Like the previous wars, the current one will settle nothing. The Israelis want to destroy Hamas' rockets. They can do so only if they occupy Gaza and remain there for an extended period while engineers search for tunnels and bunkers throughout the territory. This would generate Israeli casualties from Hamas guerrillas fighting on their own turf with no room for retreat. So Hamas will continue to launch rockets, but between the extreme inaccuracy of the rockets and Israel's Iron Dome defense system, the group will inflict little damage to the Israelis. The most interesting aspect of this war is that both sides apparently found it necessary, despite knowing it would have no definitive military outcome. The kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers followed by the incineration of a Palestinian boy triggered this conflict. An argument of infinite regression always rages as to the original sin: Who committed the first crime? For the Palestinians, the original crime was the migration into the Palestinian mandate by Jews, the creation of the State of Israel and the expulsion of Arabs from that state. For Israel, the original sin came after the 1967 war, during which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. At that moment, the Israelis were prepared to discuss a deal, but the Arabs announced their famous "three nos" at a meeting in Khartoum: no negotiation, no recognition, no peace. That locked the Israelis into an increasingly rigid stance. Attempts at negotiations have followed the Khartoum declaration, all of which failed, and the 'no recognition' and 'no peace' agreement is largely intact. Cease-fires are the best that anyone can hope for.For Hamas, at least -- and I suspect for many Palestinians in the West Bank -- the only solution is Israel's elimination. For many Israelis, the only solution is to continue to occupy all captured territories until the Palestinians commit to peace and recognition. Since the same Israelis do not believe that day will ever come, the occupation would become permanent. Under these circumstances, the Gaza war is in some sense a matter of housekeeping. For Hamas, the point of the operation is demonstrating it can fire rockets at Israel. These rockets are inaccurate, but the important thing is that they were smuggled into Gaza at all, since this suggests more dangerous weapons eventually will be smuggled in to the Palestinian territory. At the same time, Hamas is demonstrating that it remains able to incur casualties while continuing to fight. For the Israelis, the point of the operation is that they are willing to carry it out at all. The Israelis undoubtedly intend to punish Gaza, but they do not believe they can impose their will on Gaza and compel the Palestinians to reach a political accommodation with Israel. War's purpose is to impose your political will on your enemy. But unless the Israelis surprise us immensely, nothing decisive will come out of this conflict. Even if Israel somehow destroyed Hamas, another organization would emerge to fill its space in the Palestinian ecosystem. Israel can't go far enough to break the Palestinian will to resist; it is dependent on a major third-party state to help meet Israeli security needs. This creates an inherent contradiction whereby Israel receives enough American support to guarantee its existence but because of humanitarian concerns is not allowed to take the kind of decisive action that might solve its security problem. We thus see periodic violence of various types, none of which will be intended or expected to achieve any significant political outcome. Wars here have become a series of bloodstained gestures." (STRATFOR)

"The Kerry proposal also stated a commitment would be made to 'transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries of public employees.' Israeli and U.S. officials said the understanding was that money would be given to Hamas by the government of Qatar. A senior U.S. official said that the American government doesn’t like Qatar providing money to Hamas, which is still officially designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department. But Kerry was trying to reach Hamas and he believes this was the best way to influence them. 'The fact is, [the Qataris] are [funding Hamas] and as a result of that they have some influence,' the senior U.S. official said.
Hamas leaders have long been furious that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank would not make funds available to Hamas for the salaries as part of the unity agreement they agreed to this spring. Qatar has funded Hamas in Gaza since 2006, but the United States has nonetheless asked the Qataris to reverse their policy. Through the years, however, Qatar continued to support Hamas. In December 2012, Qatar’s emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani visited Gaza and pledged $400 million for the small strip of land. Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat who is the third-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said a peace deal that acknowledged and certified Qatar’s funding of Hamas 'would be significant.' 'Qatar styles itself as an ally of the United States and then sends money to Hamas. It’s a very peculiar ally of the United States and it’s something we’ve asked it not to do for years,' he said. 'I am not going to say it’s a concession we would never make.' Matthew Levitt, a former senior Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush administration and a senior scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, 'The bottom line is you will have some people say if the cost of disarming Hamas is allowing payments to their civil servants from Qatar, so be it. But we’ve had a long-standing policy of proactively combatting the financing of Hamas and the U.S. government has done a lot in this regard.'The potential of Qatar sending more money to Hamas, which was also not part of the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, contributed to an eruption of anger and retaliation against Kerry that spilled over into the press." (DailyBeast)

"Summer birthdays. Mine was this past Saturday. I’m not sentimental about birthdays although I remember when I was six or seven asking my mother if I could have a birthday party. I don’t know where I got the idea; birthday parties were not numerous in the neighborhood or the family. Mother acquiesced and somehow members of the family with cousins gathered for the meal (must have been a lunch) and then the tour de force – the cake with candles, wishes and PRESENTS! Somewhere in a photo album – most likely in one of my eldest sister’s photo albums, I’ve seen a picture of little David deadly serious surveying the table. I know it was the presents, and the ice cream and cake that I was checking. Back in those days, cake and ice cream were like Beluga and Cristal to the boy grown up. Now I’m not so sure about the Beluga (although I probably couldn’t resist).After that I gave a birthday party for myself when I was thirty-five, and invited about thirty friends. I still don’t know what I was thinking because I’m not a 'party' person (ironically, considering my business), but I staged it – also on a weekend – on the terrace of my house in Connecticut. Friends came up from the City and even from Boston. It was 1976 (the year JH was born) and I recall after the meal – the cake and ice cream (and there must have been champagne) – we talked about the Bicentennial of the United States of America, which was being celebrated all over the nation ... This past Saturday night I invited only old friends to join me, along with JH and his wife Danielle. Philip Carlson and I met in the mid-60s when I was briefly pursuing an acting career in New York and we were in an off-Off-Broadway show together. We became good friends instantly. A year later I realized this 'career' was not a good idea – I sorely lacked the dedication that is required. Philip, however, had landed the lead in an off-Broadway show called 'Until the Monkey Comes,' which was a hit. Universal signed him to a contract and he and his new wife moved to Hollywood. The year after that he introduced me and my then-wife Sheila to Barbara Preminger and her then husband Erik Preminger and another friendship sprang for us, which has lasted ever since. That same year another friend introduced me and my wife to Marianne and Steve Harrison who coincidentally lived around the corner from us on East 89th Street. We too became immediate friends and have remained very close ever since. A decade later, I was then in Los Angeles at the very beginning of a new career as a writer when in 1980, another friend who worked with Pax Quigley at Playboy introduced us. The meeting was a phone call. She called me one midafternoon in summer and we talked for about an hour and became instant friends. These friendships have remained strong ever since – despite all the changes and moves in our individual lives. So everyone at table Saturday night, has known each other for as long also. JH and I met when he came to work as my assistant when I was editor-in-chief for Judy Price, founder and publisher of Avenue Magazine, in 1998." (NYSD)

Saturday, July 26, 2014

“Nobody can give you equality or justice. If you’re a man, you take it.” Rand Paul, quoting Malcolm X, at, strangely enough, the National Urban League Conference.

Rand Paul's studious courting of African-American voters is getting the chattering classes talking. And why should it not? It is not every day that a senior member in good standing of the Grand Old Party -- a party that increasingly over the last few Presidential cycles has appealed to older, whiter voters -- extends the olive branch to a demographic that is so entrenched within the Democrat party. "After Mitt Romney received just 6 percent of the black vote in 2012, the Republican Party said that it could no longer afford to ignore African-Americans," writes Jeremy Peters in the paper of record. “'We are never going to win over voters who are not asked for their support,' (GOP leaders) wrote in a candid election post-mortem." A part of Paul's courting of voters of color is his venture outside of the comfort zone, his base, into the National Urban League Conference. Further, Paul takes immigration seriously and is trying to use his influence among the paleoconservatives to end the stalemate. It has yet to be established if Paul has the standing or the seniority and political skill to convince enough of the hard right to go along with him.

Senator Paul, clearly, has Presidential ambitions, like his father. Also, not unlike like his father, a lot of those ambitions are tied to furthering the Libertarian agenda. Libertarianism is a family affair for the Pauls; the concerns of the Republican party, it seems, run a close second. The Pauls, arguably the first family of American Libertarianism, have political principles that are curiously in synch with young people -- pro-drug legalization, pro LBGT, very live-and-let-live -- as well as being attractive to people of color in very, very blue New York City. Rand Paul, Republican from Kentucky, would probably be a welcome presence among the brown majority in NYC right about now, if only for his lengthy record of battling the lengthening shadow of police state on all fronts. "Paul has been talking for a while about how his conception of tyranny extends to long, draconian prison sentences for mostly poor and black offenders," writes Emily Brazelon in Slate. "Now he is introducing a bill that would restore voting rights to nonviolent ex-felons in federal elections."

Quite interesting.

New York City: The Great Laboratory

Rand Paul would find NYC The Great Laboratory in terms of the diversity of voters, income and political receptiveness to his independent, somewhat unorthodox ideas. New York has the largest percentage of Asian populations in any US City; the Puerto Rican population is the largest outside of Puerto Rico proper; New York is the largest home of Jewish people outside of Israel. 36% of the population is foreign born -- so any attempts to solve the immigration problem would be received with more than a smattering of applause in this city. The median age in NYC is 34, well within the libertarian purview. Further, NYC is 25% African-American, 27% Latino, roughly 12% Asian and 44% white, according to the most recent Census. A would-be President would do well to practice speaking in front of such a culturally diverse crowd. It is, after a fashion, one of the best stages to capture the imagination of different voting blocks, voting blocks alien to the GOP of late. Why is this important?

Mitt Romney Agonistes

Mitt Romney aimed for and got an incredible amount of the white vote. He got 59%, one percentage point smaller than his target of 60%. In previous elections this would have been enough but Romney, temperamentally quite conservative, did not intuit the shifting demographic trends of these United States. The electorate is no longer as white as it was when Reagan or even Bush the Younger were President. The problem was that Romney was demographically out-data'd by the Obamaites, who ran away with all the other demographics. "Obama won the Latino vote, 71 to 27," wrote Tom Scocca in Slate as a postmortem. "He also won the Asian vote, 73 to 26. Those voters all look the same to the losers. That's why they're the losers."

And elections in the foreseeable future are only going to get browner and browner ... Rand Paul, and to a degree Paul Ryan (in his new language on the subject of poverty) and even Chris Christie see this as the key to appealing to a larger audience in the general election.

Ron Paul, like him or loathe him, stands up for principles that extend far beyond the often provincial conservatism of his party, or at the very least the party that Romney in 2012 and the tea party in subsequent elections represents. Libertarianism, a philosophy, is not just entrenched positions about wealth and the race of the aging white electorate that has essentially sunk the Republican Party in the most recent Presidential elections. Libertarianism -- in its critique of big government, the lengthening shadow of the police state, a healthy skepticism over national security issues, a live-and-let live with regards to drugs, sexuality and the consensual behavior of adults is perhaps the perfect blueprint for a dying party.

The Demographic Reality

If the Republican Party wants to be the party of older white conservative voters with a high school diploma, that is their prerogative. However, in the last two Presidential elections that been a losing strategy, it should be noted. Further, in 2012, eligible African-American voters outvoted, percentagewise, white voters. 2012 was also a landmark year for all voters of color. " The highest turnout of blacks, in addition to the growing number of Hispanics and Asians, could also explain Obama's success in defeating Romney, wrote CNN.com at the time. "According to CNN exit polls, 93% of African-Americans, 71% of Hispanics and 73% of Asians supported Obama over Romney."

Rand Paul knows this. New York knows this. And now, as the issue of police brutality rises with the barometer, is the perfect time for Rand Paul to give a speech, in the city, tying his concerns about national security and the national security state and police overreach (quite literally in the form of illegal chokeholds). I believe that Senator Rand Paul, for a Republican from Kentucky, would find an alarmingly receptive audience of color in this city if he chose to make that much needed speech.

"Like almost all conflicts that have occurred in Israel, this latest war in Gaza has provoked a furious debate. Was Israel’s ground and air assault on the Gaza Strip justified by Hamas’s rocket attacks? Or were Hamas’s rocket attacks a justifiable response to Israel’s arrest of hundreds of Hamas supporters and officials? I am not going to defend Hamas’s charter, which describes Israel and the occupied territories as an 'Islamic Waqf,' nor its strategy of hurling rockets at Israel, but I am also not going to defend Israel’s response. What matters to me, and what is often ignored, is the overall moral and political context in which this and past conflicts have occurred. Israel is one of the world’s last colonial powers, and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are its unruly subjects. Like many past anti-colonial movements, Hamas and Fatah are deeply flawed and have sometimes poorly represented their peoples, and sometimes unnecessarily provoked the Israelis and used tactics that violate the rules of war. But the Israeli government has continued to expand settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to rule harshly over its subjects, while maintaining a ruinous blockade on Gaza. That’s the historical backdrop to the events now taking place." (John L. Judis)

"Montpeliano, in Knightsbridge, is just as proper Italian restaurants used to be: framed monochrome photos of silver-era movie stars; a terrace with vines; widely spaced tables; a sense of quiet. Regular place, regular table. And when it comes to the food, it’s clear that looking at the menu is a mere formality for him, as both he and the waiter know perfectly well what his choice will be: mozzarella di bufala and tomato salad, followed by risotto primavera. I decide on the same starter and a steamed sea bass. A glass of white wine to accompany the main course. Minimal fuss. This description may give completely the wrong impression of Niall FitzGerald, whose range of interests and activities is anything but circumscribed. Yes, his business career showed a consistency that is becoming unusual these days: he joined Unilever in Ireland as an accountant in 1968 and spent more than 30 years with the multinational, culminating in an eight-year stint as chairman and chief executive. This was followed, in 2004, by three years as chairman of Reuters, then three more as deputy chairman of Thomson Reuters. But the rest would take some time to list.

Anyway, we are here to talk about these other interests – even if business and culture intersect significantly in his life. FitzGerald (I would call him Sir Niall if, as an Irish citizen, he could use the knighthood conferred on him in 2002 in a more than an honorary capacity) stepped down earlier this month from the chairmanship of the trustees of the British Museum after an eight-year term." (FT)

"The summer box office downward spiral continues, with another big drop. The Top Ten grossed $130 million compared to $174 million last year; 2014 is down 6% from 2013. What gives? More new films of uneven strength are lagging behind comparable efforts amid a plethora of sequels and a lack of top-draw films. A few tentpoles worthy of the name are in fact holding up the overall box office. Long-term word of mouth successes include '22 Jump Street'(down 28%), at $180 million the biggest live-action comedy since 'Ted' (and within $40 million of its total), and in its eighth weekend in the Top Ten, 'Maleficent' (down only 22%), at a total $228 million. Even films that had mixed initial reactions are holding on due to the weakness of the newer films. The below-average percentage drops for holdovers has been a positive development this summer. Of the holdovers in the Top Ten, only the disappointing 50% drop for 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' in its second week seems more than expected. " (IndieWire)

"The youngest generation of the Stroh family — whose brewery empire was once valued at $9 billion — has almost no money left to fight over, so now they are bickering over the family‘s reputation. The Stroh heirs are furious with fifth-generation family member Frances Stroh, of San Francisco, for cooperating with a Forbes magazine story headlined, 'How To Blow $9 Billion: The Fallen Stroh Family.' In the July 21 issue, Frances talks about snorting cocaine while the family was having Christmas dinner and said, 'My life with my father felt like being inside a gilded bubble.' One Stroh recently told a friend, 'My family is now the laughingstock of the entire American family trust community.' Frances’ father Eric quit the company — which owned the Schaefer, Schlitz and Old Milwaukee brands, as well as Stroh’s — after a fight with his brother in 1985. After taking on debt to expand into the nation’s third-largest brewer, the company collapsed and was sold in 1999. The heirs received their last checks in 2008. A friend of the family told me, 'Frances fed the story to Forbes because she is preparing a legal battle. She is alienating her mother from the rest of the family, and trying to get her mother to disinherit her two brothers.'" (Richard Johnson)

Liz with Mr. Meigher.

"I HAD lunch this week at the one and only Michael's with a group of Time, Inc. veterans, including myself (counting my 1960s days writing for Sports Illustrated.) Chris Meigher, the guy who now runs Quest Media, hosted and we were Life magazine's former head Charles Whittingham and Fortune's acclaimed Carol Loomis, who retired recently at age 85 after winning praise from the New York Times' Business front page. We were pleased and honored to have Marian Heiskell with us. She is the widow of Andrew Heiskell, a Time, Inc. famous name from the good old days! (Together, Marian and Andrew became "Living Landmarks” of NYC's Conservancy. They are credited with cleaning up 42nd Street, saving Bryant Park and helping the New York Public Library.)

ANYWAY, we were all long-timers and when PR experts Peggy Siegal and Leslee Dart and publishing's Boaty Boatwright tried to join our center window table, we waved them off as "too old" for our crowd." (Liz Smith)

Friday, July 25, 2014

"In a statement on Wednesday, Brazil condemned what it said was a 'disproportionate use of force' by Israel in its Gaza Strip offensive by pulling out its ambassador from Tel Aviv for 'consultation.' The country is the second country to recall its ambassador from Israel; Ecuador did so earlier in the week. At first, the official reaction from Israel appeared sanguine. "Brazil is a friend, but we think its position is not balanced," Israel's general consul in São Paulo, Yoel Barnea, said according to the Wall Street Journal, adding that Israel should have a right to defend itself from the thousands of missiles being fired at it by Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Things soon took a turn for the worse. “This is an unfortunate demonstration of why Brazil, an economic and cultural giant, remains a diplomatic dwarf,” Israeili Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said on Thursday, the Jerusalem Post reports. “The moral relativism behind this move makes Brazil an irrelevant diplomatic partner, one who creates problems rather than contributes to solutions.' That insult wasn't the worst that Israel had reserved for Brazil, however. In an interview with the Brazilian media, Palmor brought up the most humiliating moment in recent Brazilian history – this summer's stunning World Cup semifinal loss to Germany. 'Israel's response is perfectly proportioned in accordance with international law,' Palmor said in an interview with the Jornal Nacional TV show late Thursday. 'This is not football. In football, when a game ends in a draw, you think it is proportional, but when it finishes 7-1 it's disproportionate. Sorry to say, but not so in real life and under international law.'" (WashPo)

"Anthony Haden-Guest, born 2 February 1937, is a British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines and has had several books published.This is how Anthony is described in the short Wikipedia biography of him. It’s pretty much on the money despite the more interesting inferences. For example, Wikipedia includes a blurb, written by his half-brother Christopher Guest, the actor/director/writer, for Anthony’s book 'The Chronicles of Now, a book of Anthony’s cartoons: 'Boring, pompous and a complete and utter waste of time. I don’t know what my brother was thinking.' That quote cracked me up, and it would you, if you knew the man Anthony. I couldn’t help wondering if indeed Anthony had written it himself, because he is very good at the occasional poke at the self. If you don’t know about him, he’s like a character out of a book. In fact Tom Wolfe’s best-selling 'Bonfire at the Vanities' has a character in it named Peter Fallow, who is said to be modeled on Anthony. In some ways, the portrait-ish characterization rings true of aspects of the man’s personality. But in other ways, it's Wolfe's portrait of an idea for a character possibly inspired or enhanced by Anthony’s wild ways. We’ve known each other for a couple of decades. Not well, but knowing Anthony for any length of time is to know him. He’s one of those people who lives his life as he pleases and openly, is endlessly curious, brilliantly witty in a way that only the English can be, and potentially eccentric, or maybe not even potentially. When I used to see him back in the 90s – we’ve seen much less of each other in the past decade -- he was often in black tie and could be found at Mortimer’s late nights after the parties, imbibing and conversing with pleasure and sharing such with with whomever he was conversing. He’s very very smart and deeply sensitive despite the devil-may-care adventurous bent of his life." (NYSD)

"The new film based on John le Carré’s novel A Most Wanted Man features the last significant Philip Seymour Hoffman performance (there are still two Hunger Games movies in the pipeline), and part of me wishes I could report that he was at low ebb, at the end of his talent as well as his tether: It would make his loss easier to bear from an artistic (if not a human) standpoint. But what’s on display here is a great actor at his absolute peak — damn it all. Hoffman plays German spymaster Gunther Bachmann — a post–Cold War, post–9/11 George Smiley figure who understands espionage more deeply than his superiors or the hovering CIA agents. The setting is Hamburg, where an escaped Turkish prisoner named Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) — the devout Muslim son of a corrupt Russian general and a Chechen woman — arrives to secure a vast inheritance from a German bank for purposes unknown. Most everyone is in a hurry to whisk Issa off to some black site for interrogation, but Bachmann, a self-described 'cave-dweller' who smokes and drinks heavily and spends hours staring into monitors, has a deeper grasp of human complexity. He’s not sure Issa is a bad guy, and he suspects there are shades of gray in the probable recipient of Issa’s money, the moderate Muslim academic Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), who might be giving a small part of what he collects for charity to terrorist organizations. Unlike his counterparts, Bachmann isn’t a hasty blunderer. He understands — like Smiley — that the better agent plays the long game." (NYMag)

Thursday, July 24, 2014

"Following his fiery interview on CNN, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was interviewed by Neil Cavuto on his Fox News show. In this interview, CNN came up as a topic of discussion. As 21st Century Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch looks to acquire Time Warner, in which case CNN would have to be spun off, Cavuto asked the finance and media mogul if he’d be interested in buying CNN. 'I can’t think of why we would be interested in buying CNN. We’ve got a business, we’ve got to reinvest in our business and work very hard. I just did an interview in the same building with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. A lot of people like CNN, a lot of people watch it. Ted Turner had a great concept when he started it.' 'You never say never, but in this case I can say probably never.'" (TVNewser)

FROM POLARIS.

"Now some of the most revealing exchanges—culled from 3,700 hours’ worth of conversation captured on a set of Sony TC-800B open-reel tape recorders—are collected in The Nixon Tapes (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), to be published this month. Although the transcripts of hundreds of excerpts of Watergate-related conversations have been released in the past two decades, many tapes connected with other topics have remained overlooked. While scholars, journalists, and the general public have been able to listen to the recordings by going to the National Archives, long sections of those discussions have been muffled and, at times, indecipherable. But over the last several years, the tapes have been cleaned up, pored over, and painstakingly transcribed. The result is that Luke A. Nichter (a historian who helped digitize six terabytes of audio data from the archive’s cache) and I have been able to compile a verbatim narrative of the early pivotal period of Nixon’s presidency: his action-packed first term, in which he set up much-heralded summits with his Chinese and Soviet counterparts, initiated plans for reducing America’s and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, escalated the war in Vietnam—and handily won re-election. The tapes reveal Nixon the geopolitical strategist (90 percent of the encounters are devoted to global affairs), Nixon the crisis manager, and Nixon the duplicitous paranoid—bad-mouthing colleagues and fretting about whether he would have to abandon his plans to run for re-election because of the debilitating conflict in Southeast Asia. Nixon had always assumed the recordings belonged to him. But in July 1974 the Supreme Court—in an 8–0 decision that proved to be a significant check on the powers of the executive branch—compelled the president to turn over the tapes. He would resign within 15 days. Richard Nixon is very much in the ether four decades later. An HBO special about him will air in August, and new books are appearing by former White House counsel John Dean, scholar Ken Hughes, and others. Most revelatory of all, however, are the tapes themselves. Herewith are highlights from recordings that were made during Nixon’s most influential period as president, before 'Watergate' became synonymous with political scandal. —Douglas Brinkley." (VanityFair)

"Democrats have made a national cause of turning Texas blue, even though the chances that Wendy Davis will win the governor’s race this fall remain small — and the likelihood that Texas will be a true battleground any time before 2028 probably even smaller. Georgia, on the other hand, is happening now. Democrats here don’t have to wait for the demographic projections to come true. The state’s voting population is already much more African-American than even 10 years ago, Latinos are on the rise, and there’s a business community relocating to the Atlanta metro area at a pace that looks a lot like the migration to Northern Virginia and the North Carolina research triangle the past 15 years that turned both states into presidential battlegrounds. Those shifts, together with the surprisingly competitive candidacies of Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn and gubernatorial contender Jason Carter, have convinced more than a few Democrats here that the Republican lock on the Peach State could be broken as soon as November. It’s a tall task, no question: Nunn has her hands full against businessman David Perdue — who edged out Rep. Jack Kingston in the Republican Senate primary runoff Tuesday night — as does Carter in his bid to oust Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. But a win by either Democrat would deliver a jolt so powerful that it could potentially reshape the national political landscape: Yes, Texas has its 38 electoral votes, but putting Georgia’s 16 votes in play could do just as much to complicate the GOP’s path to the White House. 'Georgia’s next in line as a national battleground state,' Carter said during a break at a campaign stop last week. 'If you look at sheer numbers, people can dispute whether it’s red or blue, but everybody knows where it’s headed.'" (Politico)

"David Gregory’s time is nearly up at 'Meet the Press,' sources told Page Six, and he could be replaced as moderator of the nation’s longest-running TV show soon after the November midterm elections. While NBC News President Deborah Turness has publicly supported the embattled Gregory, there are serious concerns about the losing battle to turn around the show’s sinking ratings.Viewership is down a whopping 43 percent compared to when Gregory ascended to the moderator’s chair in December 2008, after the death of Tim Russert. The show finished in third place behind CBS’s 'Face the Nation' and ABC’s 'This Week' in the second quarter of 2014. An NBC source said, 'The discussion is whether to make a change before or after the midterm elections. Just after the midterms would give the new moderator time to settle in.' According to insiders, NBC political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd is the rightful heir to Gregory, but he has not been officially offered the job." (P6)

"Wednesday, July 23, 2014. A warm, somewhat humid day in New York. But beautiful. I went to dinner with my friend Emilia at Sette Mezzo. Emilia, whom I have known since the 1970s, always treats me to lunch or dinner on my birthday which is this coming Saturday. We’ve been doing this for years. Just as we were finishing up, a man and a woman came in to take the table next to ours, and Emilia said to me, 'oh, it’s Essie!' I didn’t know who Essie was except that she was obviously a friend of Emilia’s. Then Emilia showed me her fingernails and told me that the color was called Hot something-or-other, and said: 'this is Essie’s.' I asked how they knew each other. Emilia and Essie both said: 'from the salon.' I figured since the nails were Essie’s and they knew each other from the salon, I started to talk to Essie about her business at the salon and how the clientele all spill their innermost secrets to the staff. Essie agreed but then told me that she didn’t own the 'salon,' that she was a customer. Then why did Emilia tell me her fingernails were Essie’s? Probably most women reading this already know the story. Essie manufactures the fingernail polish and her brand is called Essie. She and two others are the most famous fingernail polish in the world. Essie recently sold her business to L’Oreal for $50 million, or something like that. Then Essie and Emilia started talking about houses in East Hampton. Emilia’s building one and Essie is buying one. Essie, at that moment was the most famous woman in the restaurant even if people didn’t know who she was, or even that she was famous. She’s probably one of the most famous names in America, maybe the world since you may have noticed, as almost every woman and girl is wearing polish on their fingernails and toes. Emilia wears one of Essie’s greens -- Turquoise & Caicos -- on her toes. I don’t like green nail polish. I don’t know why. But then as a clever woman once said to a man who told her he didn’t like the color of her lipstick, 'then you shouldn’t wear it darling.' Then again, Emilia has great taste and style. She’d tell me it’s because of Essie." (NYSD)

photo credit: Shutterstock

"Whether it is more painful to be justly than unjustly accused is a difficult question to answer: sometimes I think the one, sometimes the other. Likewise, it is uncertain whether success or failure in life, wealth or poverty, is the greater test of character. But on the whole I have preferred the failures in life whom I have met to the successes, perhaps because I feel an instinctive affinity with them. Success is to failure as, in the opening sentence of Anna Karenina, happy families are to unhappy ones. There are so many interesting ways to fail, indeed an almost infinite number. Even the most unimaginative person can usually find an original way to make a mess of things. By comparison with failure, then, success is a dull dog. Give me a Chekhovian hopeless case any time rather than a dashing romantic hero. Personally I have never taken the character test of riches, but I think I am ready for it now; at any rate, I am at least sufficiently mature. But never having cared very deeply for money (although I have also never had any vocation for actual poverty), it is too late in the day for me to take it now. I shall have to await my next life to find out. In this life I entrust my savings, such as they are, to advisers, in the hope that they are not of the Bernie Madoff school of finance and investment; but for all I know, or can be bothered to find out, they may be. After all, one can’t be interested in everything, and it so happens that my financial affairs have never really captured my imagination." (Theodore Dalyrimple)

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

"There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent events. Ukraine is, of course, the place to start. The country is vital to Russia as a buffer against the West and as a route for delivering energy to Europe, which is the foundation of the Russian economy. On Jan. 1, Ukraine's president was Viktor Yanukovich, generally regarded as favorably inclined to Russia. Given the complexity of Ukrainian society and politics, it would be unreasonable to say Ukraine under him was merely a Russian puppet. But it is fair to say that under Yanukovich and his supporters, fundamental Russian interests in Ukraine were secure. This was extremely important to Putin. Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war. Russia was allied with the Serbs and had not wanted NATO to launch a war against Serbia. Russian wishes were disregarded. The Russian views simply didn't matter to the West. Still, when the air war failed to force Belgrade's capitulation, the Russians negotiated a settlement that allowed U.S. and other NATO troops to enter and administer Kosovo. As part of that settlement, Russian troops were promised a significant part in peacekeeping in Kosovo. But the Russians were never allowed to take up that role, and Yeltsin proved unable to respond to the insult.Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy. Though Russia had always been poor, there was a pervasive sense that it been a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs. Putin had to deal with both issues. He took a long time before moving to recreate Russian power, though he said early on that the fall of the Soviet Union had been the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. This did not mean he wanted to resurrect the Soviet Union in its failed form, but rather that he wanted Russian power to be taken seriously again, and he wanted to protect and enhance Russian national interests. The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Yanukovich was elected president that year under dubious circumstances, but demonstrators forced him to submit to a second election. He lost, and a pro-Western government took office. At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union. For him, Ukraine's importance to Russia was self-evident. He therefore believed that the CIA organized the demonstration to put Russia in a dangerous position, and that the only reason for this was the overarching desire to cripple or destroy Russia. Following the Kosovo affair, Putin publicly moved from suspicion to hostility to the West.The Russians worked from 2004 to 2010 to undo the Orange Revolution. They worked to rebuild the Russian military, focus their intelligence apparatus and use whatever economic influence they had to reshape their relationship with Ukraine. If they couldn't control Ukraine, they did not want it to be controlled by the United States and Europe. This was, of course, not their only international interest, but it was the pivotal one." (STRATFOR)

"The downing of Malaysian Airline MH17 by Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists 'is truly a historically defining moment,' said former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.“If we do the things we need to do, if we are firm and clear, but also somewhat flexible, we can still give Putin the chance to redeem himself and to rejoin the community of nations,” he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: We are, in fact, facing the first use of force over territorial issues in Europe since the outbreak of World War II. Putin is doing it. I think he can be persuaded to stop if we stand united, and that means presidential leadership from the United States and consistent, continued actions and European leaders rallying with us. It’s a major challenge, but it is defining. Stephen Sestanovich, a former US ambassador to Moscow now at Columbia University, said that Putin’s past behavior made it difficult to predict which path he would take .." (DemDigest)

"Ben Steinwrote in a bizarre magazine column last month that he’s still like a hormone-crazed teen who gets 'mad crushes' on every beautiful woman he meets. But one woman targeted by the supposedly harmless Stein told Page Six on Monday that the 69-year-old married grandfather is nothing but a manipulative leech who gave her money — and then begged to 'touch' her even though she’s pregnant. Tanya Ma, a 24-year-old pregnant performance artist, said she contacted Page Six to tell her story because she doesn’t 'want him to continue to do this to women' ... Tanya, who admits she briefly worked as an escort in Chicago, said that when she first met Stein, she thought he was interested in her as a fledgling author. 'He said he’d read my blog, and I gave him my contact information,' she said. 'We texted for about four months, then he asked me to send him pictures. He said he was very captivated and he just wanted to remember me. After a while, he started asking for more racy photos.' Then, earlier this month, 'He wanted to place me in a hotel near where he lives' in LA, Ma said. But 'the day before I was supposed to meet him, he texted me' about wanting to touch and kiss, she said. Ma said the ex-Comedy Central star wrote, 'When you get here i want to hug and kiss you. I understand you don’t want to f–k me. But i want to touch you and kiss you.' 'I knew he had developed a crush on me, but it just started to get weird,' said a grossed-out Ma, who is 18 weeks pregnant by a former beau. Growing 'horribly uncomfortable' with his antics, Ma said, she texted back: 'Ben, you may hug me and feel my baby bump, but anything more is too much for me. I’m not your girlfriend. Can’t we simply enjoy a conversation and meal? I’m pregnant.' Stein responded, 'Your note hurts my feelings. Insulting. Shows zero appreciation.'" (P6)

"Since I was five years old, I don't think I've missed more then a few Junes in London. As soon as school was out, my sister Maureen, our beloved English governess Ann "Daya" Baker, and I would board the SS America or the SS United States, which were the height of luxury at that time. And off we'd sail for a wonderful two months in London. Nowadays, except for the brief interlude of the Concorde, most travel is a nightmare. At least planes have seats that can turn into beds, which I hoped would neutralize my terrible jet lag. It didn't. When in London, we always stay with our best friend Persian beauty Kokoly Fallah, known the world over as Kooki. She kindly sent a car and driver to pick us up with a note not to do anything but come straight to her house. I have a tendency to disappear into the market, the chemist, Selfridges, and everywhere else and forget the time. After we arrived and caught up briefly, I had mentioned to Kooki that I'd like to try André Balaz's new place, the Chiltern Firehouse. Kooki (who goes everywhere) said, 'don't fret, we already have reservations.' OH! I admire Balaz and think he's very smart and very talented. I especially enjoy Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Supposedly, one can't book a table at the Firehouse until October unless you're a Biggie, a Somebody, or a Famous Star of film or stage. It was all so un-English, all that hype and velvet ropes and paparazzi. I had always enjoyed the nightclub Annabel's, Harry's Bar, Mark's Club, San Lorenzo, The Ivy, Nobu, and Robin Birley's newish 5 Hertford Street — very popular establishments without all the hype and hysteria. Finally, we do get to that controversial little outpost of Hollywood, the Chiltern Firehouse. It's both a hotel and restaurant, but I'm not sure the hotel part is open yet. It seems that people either love it or hate it depending on how they're treated — which makes sense. At this point it should be renamed Movie Star Central. It's sort of sad that they are getting almost all of the attention, and making the less famous customers, of which there are few allowed in, feel snubbed. I say sad because the decor is very smart, the staff seems nice, and the Portuguese chef's Nuno Mendes' 'specials,' such as crab donuts and crunchy chicken skin (without the chicken) Caesar salad, deliciously different. I just hope CF lasts, and doesn't prove Lao Tzu's quote true, 'The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.'" (NYSD)